Post-Firing Reaction

When the news of Charlie Weis’ firing broke, the reaction quickly went from "wait, what?" to "who’s next?"  Before we dive too far into the search for a new coach and the outlook on the rest of the season, we asked all of our contributors to sum up their thoughts on the firing below.  Here are their responses:

dnoll5: Something had to be done.  There have been absolutely no in-game adjustments from Weis and yesterday’s game was enough evidence for me to get rid of this guy. Montell Cozart was 12/31 with 4 interceptions and a 6.3 QB rating on the day.  There has to be someone that can pass better than this guy if you are hell bent on using your QB as a passer, yet Weis inexcusably stuck with him.  Texas was certainly beatable yesterday, will lose to their fair share of Big 12 opponents, but Weis prevented KU from taking advantage.

The fact that Brady Quinn thought that KU acted too harshly in firing this guy cements in my mind that Sheahon Zenger made the move at the right time.   He was the color "analyst" for the KU/Texas game and there were times during the broadcast where it really seemed like he was doing everything in his power to defend Cozart and Weis.  Did he watch the same offensive performance as the rest of us?

Unless KU is content in seeing 14 fans and a band in Memorial Stadium the rest of this season, they made the only choice that made sense.

KU Grad 08: The program was just a joke. A complete joke. I said this earlier, and I’ll say it again: The vision from the top down just made absolute no sense. Last year, we had a passing QB but no WRs. This year, we bring in two WRs that are good players and McCay and Mundine have both made improvements and look better (especially McCay). So now that we actually have WRs that can get open and make plays we trot out a QB that can’t throw the ball? Why did we run off Heaps? Why is Cozart the best option at QB (and a poor one at that)?

The problem with this team has been offense, and that is Weis’ calling card. The defense kept us in several games last year, only to see the offense do nothing. That was the case yesterday. If you hold a Big 12 team to 23 points (and they probably would have had less than that had the offense not given them a few short fields) you should have a shot to win. We didn’t even score one single point.

No clear direction or leadership and a terrible offense made this easy. If money was an issue I would have been ok with holding off on the firing, but clearly Zenger has no problem getting that cash. I just hope we go outside our tree for the next coach and give this program a fresh attitude. We need a makeover.

KU Chief: I’m a patient guy, I wasn’t calling for Weis’ head after last season, with the thought that maybe the Reagan hire was what was needed for this team to look like it at least belonged in a major conference. Sadly that has not been the case, and while we "gave him September" I’m ecstatic that that is ALL that we gave him (well, that and approximately eleventy trillion dollars). I like the work that Charlie did off of the field, as grades seem to be good, and there haven’t been any issues that garnered any real media attention, but when it comes down to it, the title is head football coach, not guidance counselor. It’s disappointing that there never was any real turnaround under CW, but it was becoming increasingly clear that continuing to watch and wait as more and more winnable games ended with the "valiant defensive effort, but the offense just wasn’t there" post-mortem that this was as good a time as any to cut bait and get a jump on a new hire. It will be interesting to see how the team responds to the change, and I think that what we see for the rest of the year will be where we can really evaluate how much Weis brought to the table (or ate from it).

averagegatsby: I said from day 1 that it was a bad hire for KU, and what he has done at KU in his short tenure is basically what happened at Notre Dame on a smaller scale.  Charlie Weis is only good at one thing, and that is play calling.  At Notre Dame he was able to recruit well enough to take advantage of that against lesser teams, but he also lost to teams that Notre Dame had no business ever losing to.  So without getting elite recruits at Kansas it doesn’t matter how good his play calling is, because he is absolutely incapable of developing talent at all.  Under Weis at Notre Dame he would have freshmen that dazzled and by the time they were seniors they were disappointments.  I don’t know what he does Sunday through Monday, but it isn’t developing players.   It's going to be kind of hilarious when he gets hired as an assistant coordinator this year, or as a coach somewhere next year and is being paid by 3 teams because Notre Dame will be paying him through the end of 2015.

Jim Hammen: Unpopular opinion alert:  I don’t love firing Charlie right now, at this point in the season.  I think I would’ve given him until the end of the year to try and turn things around.  At 2-2, with two ugly losses, are we really in a spot other than what was generally expected before the season?  After talking to people and taking in other opinions over the last 24 hours, I am warming to the idea of giving Clint Bowen a mostly pressure-free opportunity to show us something this season.  But still, if it was my choice, I would have waited until December to pull the trigger on the Charlie Weis era.

misterbrain: About time.  The fact is that Weis really should have been fired at the end of last year, but with so much more money owed and so little time at the helm, it was difficult to pull the trigger. But we finally got to the point where Charlie not only wasn’t doing anything to help the program anymore, he was actively holding them back.  The news coming out today talked about how the uncertainty surrounding his future was causing division in the locker room and served as nothing but a distraction.  This fact alone tells me that not did Charlie need to go, but that the situation had been festering for too long.

mikeville: This needed to happen. It will end up being a good thing for Kansas. Weis was obviously not the right fit and was definitely not getting the job done. Assuming we can get the right guy in - whoever that may be - we have the resources and the talent to be competitive and bowling by 2016. Anything less should be unacceptable.  That may sound harsh and unrealistic at a place like Kansas, but its the world we live in. A major D1 college having such a sad-sack football program is an embarrassing mark against the university, and it needs to get corrected.

Ivan Portillo: It was time. Thanks for that conference game win, Charlie, but it was time. I’ll admit I’m surprised it happened this early in the season, but there’s no point holding on to someone you know you’re going to cut ties with anyways. KU was would have been like that high school senior who holds up on breaking up with his girlfriend until the week before college. They both knew it was coming; now KU gets have fun and talk to other coaches.

I loved the Weis signing when it first happened and I was one of his biggest supporters, but you aren’t kidding anyone if you thought that Charlie was going to lead us out of the cellar. 41-3 at Duke, and 23-0 vs Texas? I don’t care if you’re Alabama or Sacramento State, something has to be done after producing that much nothingness. Unfortunately for Charlie, all the blame went on him. That’s it though. No more blaming Charlie. If the team wants to show that the coaching was the problem, it’s time for them to step up and stop thinking that they can pass off their mediocrity on the coaches, because at the end of the day, it’s not Weis dropping those catches out there or letting running backs rush through him; it’s the players.

We look to the future now. I don’t expect many wins from the team the rest of the year but I’m expecting progress. This is essentially a lost season now. Let’s just evaluate the players, expect a loss and anything else is just a bonus.

We will wrap up the majority of our coverage on the actual firing of Weis throughout this week, but obviously this is a major change in the direction of the program, and the repercussions will be felt, and discussed, throughout the remainder of the season and into next season.

Please feel free to share any thoughts that you haven’t already (or even some that you have) in the comments below.  Did anyone here help you see anything in a new light?